Erosion in inlets endangers west ends of the East Frisian Islands
In the future, it will be possible to use mathematical models to predict the extent of erosion in the inlets with the rising sea level and thus the threat to the fortified west coasts of many of the East Frisian Islands. This was explained today at the Hanse Wissenschaftskolleg (HWK) in Delmenhorst by the Director of the Institute for Chemistry and Biology of the Marine Environment (ICBM) at the University of Oldenburg, Prof. Dr. Jürgen Rullkötter. At the closing meeting of the DFG Research Group BioGeoChemistry of Tidal Flats, the main results of the project, which involved the collaboration of some 100 scientists, were presented.
Scientists from the Senckenberg Institute (Wilhelmshaven) and the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology (Bremen) also cooperated in the Research Group, which was established by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) in 2001 and run by the ICBM. The flagship of this research is the permanent measurement station in the inlet southwest of Spiekeroog, which can collect and transmit important data on processes in tidal flats year-round and under all weather conditions.
This enabled biologists, geochemists, geologists, physicists and mathematicians in the Research Group to work together to identify the physical processes in the Wadden Sea that shape its outer form and to find out how important the biological processes of the smallest dwellers, the microorganisms, are for the function of the tidal flat ecosystem. According to Rullkötter, these findings enabled, among others, the development of a mathematical model (hydrodynamic model) with which we can now look into the future and show for example that a rising sea level will lead to a strong erosion in the inlets, and therefore the fortified western heads of many islands will be more threatened than previously assumed. At the same time, the model shows where the eroded sediments are deposited in front of and behind the islands and thereby change the form of the Wadden Sea.
The ecosystem model developed by the Research Group, which is coupled to the hydrodynamic model, can calculate how biological communities change when external conditions are altered.